Sunday, May 3, 2009

Nice work if you can get it!

"There's something rotten in the State of . . . "





By RONALD QUINLAN
Sunday May 03, 2009

FOREIGN Affairs
Minister Micheal Martin cannot say how much his teacher's pension will be worth to him yet, as it won't be calculated by the Department of Education until he is 65, according to his spokesman. Under the current rules for politicians, Mr Martin stands to get a ministerial pension of €70,000 from his 12 years as a minister, with approximately €53,000 more coming from his eight years as an ordinary backbench TD.

The Fianna Fail politician could see this €123,000 pension pot topped up by the five-and-a-half years of teaching he did at Presentation College Cork 20 years ago. Mr Martin refuses to give up his Cork teaching post, choosing instead to remain on official "Oireachtas leave". Last week, Mr Martin's diplomatic skills appeared to desert him temporarily as he sought to justify his decision to cling to his "other" job. Speaking to reporters in Brussels, Mr Martin flatly rejected suggestions that he should give up his teaching job in Cork, which still requires the employment of a substitute teacher, 20 years later. "If anything happened tomorrow morning with regard to my political career, I'm not going anywhere in a hurry, there is another 20 years to go; [but] you have to take these situations into consideration," he added.

Asked last night by the Sunday Independent if Mr Martin would apologise for the remarks, on the basis that many people who have lost their jobs, or seen their pensions evaporate, could find them offensive, a spokesman for the minister claimed he had been quoted out of context. He said: "No insensitivity was intended."

On the matter of Mr Martin's teacher's pension, the spokesman stressed that the minister had written to written to the department to inform them that he wanted to receive "no pension credits at all" for the 20-year period that has elapsed since he left the Presentation College.

No comments: